It was late. It was dark. We pulled into the driveway and something caught my eye. In the shadows, in the driveway next door, a tiny red dot betrayed dark figure. I opened the garage door and stepped cautiously from the truck. My wife took things from the cab and headed inside. I dropped the tailgate in order to remove the unwieldy cargo. The burning cigarette attached to a man’s mouth approached quickly.
“May I help?” puffed the cig.
“Gladly!” say I.
In a sec the mini-freezer gently met pavement, but with a groan.
“Thanks”, says a me, looking curiously at the grown man.
“I just had surgery on my arm. Ah, she hurts.”, puffed he.
“Lordy!”, I concorded. In this stranger’s efforts to help me, he may have hurt himself.
It turns out, this man was waiting for others to arrive. Upon our last words, several vehicles raced for the curb and piled out into street and marched toward the house of Puffy’s. The neighborly homeowner among them informed me that a friend of theirs, a young adult I surmised, had died suddenly (tragically?). This explanation served as a purpose for the gathering.
The next morning, the next-door driveway and the curbs were clear. Nothing to see here…but… What looked like a tall, rounded vase with a base sat solitary and distinctive near the attached garage. Filled with something which seemed to give it external texture, it was. Internal gravitas? But what was it? Remnants, but of what? A tribute, but to who? Ashes for Algernon? Butts!

As a child, I was well loved, but… One time, when I was a young boy, my old man (Dad), yelled at me, “You have the temperament of an old man.” Not knowing what temperament meant at that time, I didn’t have an immediate retort.

Dig if you will the picture, a local winery event with band and vendors and a Saturday family crowd. Two uninterested vino connoisseurs (NOT winos) seek out a spot far from the madding crowd. A place where they can share stories and observations which challenge veracity. There it is! A pergola covered courtyard opposite the banter and the band with the expansive winery buildings in between. With appropriate glass wear and beverage acquired, seats in a semi-sunny spot are selected and the games begin. But the skeptic in the pair somehow knew that serenity found would soon devolve into paradise lost.

Dream, if you can, a courtyard. First, there arrived a quiet lady with a glass who sat an appropriate distance. Next, they came, a romantic couple who chose a table as distant as possible. After them…the deluge. Prominent among them was the young fit couple with a baby carrier and a noisy gaggle of boys trailing off after those youths spotted a corner for creating mischief. This young couple, with expansive seating still available, sat European close to our perimeter table. So be it.

“Brunswick!”, thundered the parental scream. The startling break in the quiet almost bowled me out of my chair. It seems the fit couple dad had a fit because his boy baby (improbably named Brunswick) split out of sight with the soccer jocks. Slipping out of sight with this dad ran a foul of his rules. Ok, enough, nothing to see here. Settle back into to your conversation. But minutes, seemed like seconds, later…

“Brunswick!”, boomed the now familiar mezzo-frantico voice.

Maybe I’m just too demanding. My lofting impatience hitting the ceiling, I directed barely audible invectives at the near table – you know, the kind you hear in the background when you’re giving your monthly committee status report.

“What?”, yelled back the puzzled little Brunswick. I was puzzled, too. He was clearly visible this time through the glistening concertina wire, between the deep effluent filled roadside gutters and he looked to be escaping the several stray dogs playfully chasing the urchins.

Why do they scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when doting parents care.

Freezing solid in Montgomery County Texas is a rare threat the good Lord giveth. Almost like proverbial hen’s teeth. The warning of winter storm sounds from rural to borough and citizens listening batten down their hatches. A crystal cover soon cloaks each road and roof and wheeled ride. Worry turns to wonder as Nature slightly smiles in arrogance at the halting power she still holds over the ever pushy and impatient men at her mercy.

For an old farmer, staying home (and far from the madding roads) is my default, anyway. So, the calamity of traffic lines looms less important. More important be the water lines in winter. And the great lengths that water hoses go. Strewn and stretched. To five coops, with four splitters, into three pools, from two sources. One shrinking soul slinks out each night to protect the vessels of drink from the icy fingers waiting to grip them. Cutting off water, draining off hoses, taking off nozzles. Maybe silently praying that I got it all. Knowing from piles of coiled evidence that I did not.

The next morning icily crackles awake, an accompaniment to the familiar cackle of poultry. Layered clothing and mud caked boots soon maneuver through a glass menagerie of thin, irregular glass panes glazed overnight in my muddy puddled pasture. The Ice Queen! Yes. She was here. From coop to pen, to my gloved hand, fingers numbing, in the deep freeze, exhausted smoke hurries up from my lungs and sun rises. My cotton and wool weaves envy the victory that fur and feathers still claim against wind chill. My ever-present canine companions relish the relief from the heat of this climate change, adding their own smoky dogs’ breath. My fowl friends stare thirstily and indignant. A steady gaze, one hundred pairs of eyes seemingly asking at once, “Who do I have to kill to get a drink in this place?”

Good question. I go grab a maul (like an axe but blunt and fat). The skinny chickens see me coming in brisk. One would think, instinctively, the winged animals would take flight at the sight of an axe. But curiosity overcomes them and all watch to see what this fool with his tool may do. I speed past them to the waterfowl.

First, I deliver a love tap to this seemingly pitiful ice sheet on the kiddie pool that serves as the duck’s drinker. Only a contusion. Next, I raise it up higher, delivering a more insistent blow. Maybe a fracture. Followed by a big bounce. Whoops! Back atcha. Finally, I chop at the ice like I would wood. I’m attacking an evil, tightly grained, unseasoned green, stringy round of hickory. That did it.

Drink it now, you young quacks, because in an hour or so the laws of physics will taketh it away.

I am not nice. But I try to be. One fine day, my wife took an order for eggs, a hen and a rooster. Eggs and hen in inventory. Rooster on backorder. Chicken to customer travel clucked several miles, so parties agreed to a meetup point – inexplicably a short distance from the buyer’s house. Such a compromise. Anyway, after exchanging the eggs, hen, some of feed, a cute chicken feeder and some nesting hay, we were off. Another citizen on her way to home grown farm fresh eggs. We seemed done…not so fast.

I am not easy. But easy I try to be. It wasn’t but a week or so before the lady called and said she was out of feed. I previously gave her some feed and a little feeder as a courtesy and told her of at least one place where she could buy feed. Ok, but she needed me to bring her feed. The hen had nothing to eat. I bought a 50-pound bag of Layer Pellets and drove down to a different rendezvous point for the exchange – about the same distance for me to travel but quite convenient for her. So, after the exchange of feed and money, we were off. Another citizen on her way to having a well-fed hen and home-grown farm fresh eggs. We thought our deed finished…easy there rider.

I’m not generous. But I try to be. The next time my wife talked to the hen lady, she said her hen was not laying eggs. This was odd. A Gold Star hen less than two-years-old had stopped laying in the prime season of spring. With no other information I concluded that the hen needed company. I could donate one of my older birds so that companionship and egg production would commence. So, one day down the road we drove, old hen in cage. Good deed on the way. This time we drove to her house. I’ll never forget my shock on that sweltering summer day when I saw the non-producing hen in her backyard, tabled up high in a – wait for it – parakeet cage. My head, my heart and my hope dropped. Here I was donating one of my beloved birds to someone who cluelessly tortured her first purchase. I presented the free bird and left the small cage which was more than twice the size of the current housing. Dejectedly, we drove off determined to come back with a reasonably sized chicken coop for my former fowl. We thought we had a final solution…hold your horses Samaritan.

I’m not tolerant. But I try to be. Due to circumstances beyond our mutual control – her husband’s death, our Hurricane Harvey, the sweltering summer of 2017 – the roomy coop did not materialize until one hot Saturday this fall. While I struggled to complete the project with materials and remnants on hand, my wife struggled to contact the bird lady of Alcatraz. I finished the cage in the afternoon – some of my best worked. However, my wife could not get in touch with the lady by any means. We decided to make the drive south and check things out. Wow. We got there – she was gone! No furniture as observed through the bare windows. No parakeet cage with suffering animal. No loaned out handmade roomy cage with free bird. In addition, cell phone – cancelled, forwarding address – nada, personal contact – nope. Tracking this lady down to give her new free stuff (roomy coop) in exchange for old free stuff (homemade cage) loomed problematic because she was known to my wife only by her nickname -Ya Ya. With waning hope, we talked to the neighbors – who knew nothing, checked the mailbox – with mail addressed to both the living and the dead, and knocked at the door of the leasing office – closed on Saturday at 3 pm. Naively, we drove away towards home knowing that somehow there would be answers about the disappearance of Ya Ya, without knowing when or how or what. We knew, assuredly, that it was only a matter of time…until what?

He talks. Oh yeah. If you had three hours and he finds you, he’ll consume every minute. Hobbling from his truck, past the single bullet hole, up to within three feet, he starts yapping like a like captive escaped and un-muzzled. Knowing everything and listening to nothing and missing the point. Trying to impress so hard that a form of depression sets in. As I say goodbye in the middle of a diatribe after his three hours are up, he moves with me as I move away and toward his exit gate. Only when he stayed well past the appointment time someone had set for him does him inch back towards his truck door. Only silence will silence him. No talking. No expression. Play dead. By the time he is gone I am spent. But it was worth it – on occasion.

My cabin in the woods was homemade. Redneck rafters made out of spliced two by fours. Spliced wires snake through the walls and attic. Plumbing and sewer lines barely buried and cheaply and inexpertly connected.

Today I need a friend. It always happens. I get all pumped up and inspired to do great things and then something happens to rain on my parade like…a massive break in my sewer line. Ok, I know its always something. The rain washed away enough dirt to expose the break in the sewer created by the professional tree cutters I hired.

Last night we attended the Houston iteration of the Jimmy Buffett “I Don’t Know” tour at Cynthia Woods Pavilion. Since we flooded more than a week ago on May 26th, 2016, there hasn’t been a lot of singing at Sawmyl Synders, not even karaoke. I always love going to the Jimmy Buffett concerts no matter the venue, the conditions, or the songs that are sung. At our first concert at Minute Maid Park, Houston’s baseball diamond, a man in a coconut bra was cited for indecent exposure. At the Paris, France, concert in 2013, someone’s floating balloon blocked the vision of dozens all night and never got popped. Last night, the lawn people got a shower as Mother Nature arrived early and took a seat on top of the only partially prepared but fully un-surprised patrons. I know of at least one person that does not attend Jimmy’s Doings anymore because they don’t like half the songs.

Everyone stands at the beginning of the concert, at the end of the venue and in between when the great old fun songs are sung. But, most people sit, make beer runs or talk among themselves when the OTHER new fad songs are hung. Myself, I wish for certain songs to occur, the ones that stir my spirit but I know they’ll remain unsung.

~Firstly, “Last Mango in Paris” (1985) takes me away, a long way, to a modest yellow balcony, a small silver revolver and a tiny banana bolso. It has added meaning as time goes by, such as when the pick pockets of Paris partied with us and Jimmy not that long ago –

“I had a third world girl in Buzios, With a pistol in each hand…”;

Tony Tarracino, known as Captain Tony to parrotheads, was the owner of Captain Tony’s Saloon and former Key West Mayor, was immortalized by Jimmy Buffett in the song “Last Mango In Paris”. He married four times and fathered 13 children. A film titled “The Cuba Crossing” recounts his story; Stewart Whitman played Captain Tony. Captain Tony also authored a book with Brad Manard, called “Life Lessons of a Legend.”

~Then Fruitcakes – Released in 1994, I wasn’t able to find any “meaning” documented on the internet so I’ll add my own…

It’s the Buddhist in you, it’s the pagan in me
It’s the Muslim in him, she’s Catholic ain’t she?
It’s that born again look, it’s the wasp and the Jew
Tell me what’s goin on, I ain’t got a clue

I’m starting with the above lyric because I believe that most people look at the world and think it’s crazy because of THEM. Jimmy is pointing out that much of what is craziness is merely individual truths bumping up against each other. It is the lack of acknowledgement of this pseudo fact that creates the illusion of insanity in reality. To use a metaphor from current events: When overnight the great river overflowed its banks, the City of Light, Paris, was declared in Seine.

~Also, Growing Older But Not Up:

So now don’t get me wrong
This is not a sad song
Just events that I have happened to witness
And time takes it’s toll as we head for the poll
And no one dies from physical fitness

~Again, getting old, Migrations:

Well, now if I ever live to be an old man
I’m gonna sail down to Martinique
I’m gonna buy me a sweat-stained Bogart suit
And an African parakeet

And then I’ll sit him on my shoulder
And open up my trusty old mind
I gonna teach him how to cuss, teach him how to fuss
And pull the cork out of a bottle of wine

~The Stories We Could Tell:

Stared at that guitar in that museum in Tennessee
Nameplate on the glass brought back twenty melodies
Scars upon the face told of all the times he fell
Singin’ all the stories he could tell

~Cowboy In the Jungle (1978): There are several articles written about Theodore Roosevelt exploring The River of Doubt which refer to the former president as “Cowboy in the jungle”.

We’ve gotta roll with the punches
Learn to play all of our hunches
Makin’ the best of whatever comes your way
Forget that blind ambition
And learn to trust your intuition
Plowin’ straight ahead come what may.
And there’s a cowboy in the jungle.

~Boat Drinks (1979): (from Song Facts) Buffett: It was February in Boston, and I was cold and wanted to go home. I came out of the bar and couldn’t find a cab except for the one that was running in front of the nearby hotel. There was no driver in it, and I was too cold to care about the consequences. I hopped in and drove back to my hotel. I did leave the fare on the seat.

I’d like to go where the pace of life’s slow.
Could you beam me somewhere, Mister Scott?
Any old place here on Earth or in space.
You pick the century and I’ll pick the spot.

~We are the People Our Parents Warned Us About (1983, One Particular Harbor)…This happens to also be the motto of the Bandidos motorcycle gang.

I was supposed to have been a Jesuit priest or a Naval Academy grad
That was the way that my parents perceived me
Those were the plans that they had
Though I couldn’t fit the part too dumb or too smart
Ain’t it funny how we all turned out
I guess we are the people our parents warned us about

…

Hey hey, Gardner McKay, take us on the leaky Tiki with you… Actor Gardner McKay is best known for the lead role in the TV series “Adventures in Paradise (TV series)”, in which he, on the schooner Tiki III, sailed the South Pacific.

The Registered Veterinary Technician profession acts in a support role to the Veterinary clinic. The Veteranarian, the clinic, the animal owners and the animals benefit directly and indirectly from the functions and tasks performed by this licensed or certified individual. Like a hospital nurse, the Vet Tech makes sure that the needs of the veterinarian, animal owner, and subject animal are met with high standards and thorough results.

At intake, the Tech may have to restrain or stabilize the animal. An accurate history will be taken from the owner. These results will have to be properly documented into the clinic system. In support of the veterinarian, this professional may additionally be take X-Rays and samples, and prepare animals and instruments for surgery.

Customers need to be questioned, advised and trained with accuracy and consideration. Routine procedures such as trimming nails, expressing glands and removing sutures occur regularly. Administering prescribed medications and supervising veterinary assitants are also in the Tech’s remit. The Vet Tech wears many hats in the support of his professional duties.